About ONMEDIATION | ON MEDIATION

ON MEDIATION. Platform on curatorship and research arises from the research group Art Globalization Interculturality (University of Barcelona) as a result of the need to examine in depth the results of contemporary curatorial practices understood as a mechanism of mediation, ‘thinking beyond the specialized role’ and creating a space for debate ‘on the cultural location of this mediation’ (Lars Bang Larsen & Soren Andresen, 2006).

ON MEDIATION. Platform on curatorship and research is a theoretical and practical platform, which addresses various perspectives to identify different methodologies to push curatorial practice towards a post-disciplinary setting. Among other activities, ON MEDIATION offers an annual International Seminar which is organized through an initial –theoretical – stage of lectures, led by curators of recognized international experience, and a second – practical – stage, where participants can develop the ideas put forward during the seminar through a mentored curatorial project, presented in different spaces within the artistic scene of Barcelona.

When ON MEDIATION defends the role of theory in the curatorial practice, we also do so regarding research, emphasising three aspects:

Research as experience, which should be the starting point for any mechanism of investigation. To this should be added a certain compulsion to highlight a subjective dimension derived from the individual and “experiential” encounters of each curator with the multiple questions that come from “inhabiting” a global world. Curation as a “narrative of experience”, as Irit Rogoff argues.
Research as part of the archival strategy. Remobilising and reanimating the past together with history. Producing histories in a different way.
A new research paradigm: curiosity. The desire to learn more. A mode of encounter led by pleasure, surprise.

We locate ourselves, furthermore, within the framework of what we would like to call the curatorial turn: a turn within which we understand the “curatorial” as a field of “overlapping” and “intertwining” activities, tasks, and roles that were previously attributed to distinct institutions and disciplines.

The “curatorial” not only implies a mode of generating, mediating, and reflecting experience and knowledge developed in artists’ studios and cultural institutions, but also refers to a wide field of knowledge related to art and culture in the different contexts in which these are defined.

In any case, we understand the “curatorial” in relation to a “constellational mode” where objects (works of art), information (theoretical discourses), people (artists, curators, managers of institutions), and spaces (museums, galleries, alternative spaces) converge and coalesce in a dynamic way, oriented towards the process.

ON MEDIATION always starts from a socio-political dimension of the “curatorial” within our contemporary society, which is marked by globalisation within the artistic field and “immaterial” working conditions in the socio-economic field.

In conclusion, this seminar is aimed at artists, critics, students, researchers, and other groups interested in developing their curatorial concerns beyond the disciplinary sphere, exploring in depth the practice of cultural mediation and questioning imposed models.